Amnesty International: Global Impunity Fuels Israel's West Bank Annexation

Amnesty International said Thursday the international community’s failure to impose meaningful consequences on Israel has enabled a rapid consolidation of control over the occupied West Bank, warning that annexation is becoming an entrenched reality.

The organization argued that continued diplomatic and economic engagement without punitive measures has emboldened Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to accelerate land appropriation, settlement expansion, and administrative integration.

The West Bank has been under Israeli occupation since 1967. Over decades, settlement construction has fragmented Palestinian territorial contiguity. Amnesty detailed a sequence of policy steps since December 2025.

On December 10, 2025, the Israel Land Authority issued a tender for 3,401 housing units in the E1 area east of Jerusalem, intended to expand Ma’ale Adumim and link it with occupied East Jerusalem.

The following day, December 11, Israel’s security cabinet approved 19 new settlements, raising the number approved by the current coalition to 68 in three years and bringing the total number of official settlements to about 210.

On January 5, 2026, Israeli authorities designated 694 dunams of land in the northern West Bank towns of Deir Istiya, Biddya, and Kafr Thulth as “state land.”

On February 8, 2026, the cabinet approved measures easing the sale of Palestinian land to settlers and expanding Israeli authority in areas under Palestinian administration.

On February 15, 2026, the cabinet allocated more than 244 million Israeli shekels, approximately $78 million, to establish a government mechanism facilitating land registration in Area C. The move transfers land registration powers from the civil administration to Israel’s Ministry of Justice, a step Amnesty characterized as amounting to annexation under Israeli law.

Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research Erika Guevara-Rosas said “unconditional” U.S. support and a “lack of international accountability” over Gaza and decades of occupation have emboldened Israel to escalate what she called illegal actions. She added that settlement expansion and land formalization reflect a “catastrophic failure” by the international community to act.

These developments occurred despite a 2024 International Court of Justice ruling that the occupation is illegal and must end “as rapidly as possible … including removing settlements and forcing settlers out.”

In 2025, the UN General Assembly set September 2025 as a deadline for ending the occupation. Amnesty said that instead of complying, Israel has “invented new ways to violate international law.”

The UN Human Rights Council reported last week that policies in the West Bank, including systematic unlawful use of force and home demolitions, aim to uproot Palestinian communities. It warned of risks of ethnic cleansing amid forcible transfers.

Since October 2023, at least 1,094 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops and settlers in the West Bank, according to UN figures.

At the same time, the settler population has surpassed half a million. Amnesty argues that state-backed settler violence, administrative consolidation, and settlement growth collectively entrench what it describes as a system of apartheid and irreversible territorial fragmentation.